'Profit-driven': Hegseth's 'future of warfare' advisory committee is unlawfully packed with 'private interests' and 'biases,' lawsuit says

Several watchdog organizations have sued the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary Pete Hegseth over a newly formed advisory committee that includes figures such as Elon Musk, citing fears over “private interests” and a lack of transparency with the public.

The 37-page complaint alleges that Hegseth unlawfully created the committee named “Project Meridian: the Future of Warfare,” is keeping its records secret, and is composed of “private-sector membership” that “raises precisely the type of conflict-of-interest concerns” that the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) “was designed to address.”

Consequently, the nonprofit groups say, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia should bar Project Meridian from conducting operations until the Department of Defense changes its practices.

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On Sept. 30, Hegseth announced that to “maintain global dominance,” the U.S. must “anticipate future operational environments and act decisively to develop the tools to dominate in them.” He thus directed his department’s chief technology officer to create Project Meridian, which “will study the battlefields of the future, identify which weapons and technologies warfighters will need to harness to dominate in these environments, and propose actionable solutions to start developing, testing and fielding these capabilities.”

To accomplish these objectives and finalize the recommendations by Jan. 28, 2027, the advisory committee will “leverage critical perspectives from outside the Pentagon, drawing upon a group of top technologists, innovators, business leaders, policy makers, and national security experts” such as Musk and Palmer Luckey, a co-founder of a defense technology company, and a dozen or so others.

To the watchdog groups, which include the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), the conflicts of interest are abundant.

“Each of these members brings to Project Meridian a profit-driven approach to national defense and technological integration that relies on the continuation and expansion of opportunities for their companies and clients to profit from the operations of the DoD as its operations become more advanced,” the complaint reads.

Isabel Munilla, interim executive director of POGO, put it even more plainly in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

“The federal government should not be outsourcing its vision on ‘the future of warfare’ to a panel dominated by individuals that stand to profit from it,” she said. “Stacking Project Meridian with industry leaders will further skew national security policy toward corporate priorities, and away from the public interest.”

The watchdogs point specifically to FACA, a law that “governs the establishment, operation, and termination of advisory committees within the executive branch of the Federal Government.” Among other things, FACA requires that a federal advisory committee that includes nongovernmental members “make its records and meetings open to the public, and be fairly balanced in its membership.”

That is not the case with Project Meridian, according to the complaint.

“No members of Project Meridian provide a meaningful counterweight to the biases and profit-driven view of Project Meridian’s current non-government employee members,” the lawsuit states, pointing to the only government employees in the project reporting to Hegseth and other members having ties to President Donald Trump.

The watchdogs then get more specific. From the filing:

Project Meridian has no meaningful representation from any person or entity with a record of advocating for restraint in the proliferation and use of military assets; that specializes in minimizing human rights abuses and harm to civilian populations and resources or addressing the fallout from them; that specializes in identifying and addressing the ethical constraints that may limit the development and use of artificial intelligence and other autonomous mechanisms for national defense; that operates or represents those that operate as civilians in theatres of war and military conflict whose safety and interests might be impacted by the future conduct of the DoD as recommended by Project Meridian; that has expertise in the development and administration of the DoD budget; that has expertise in government ethics; or that has expertise in international law.

And the groups say some of them have requested records about Project Meridian, but they have not received responses.

Because of this “deprivation of statutorily required information,” the groups are “unable to inform the public about any aspect of Project Meridian’s activities except what” the Trump administration “choose[s] to release,” and they are thus “unable to ascertain and attempt to address lapses in its ethics and integrity,” according to the complaint.

In addition to asking the court to disband the committee “while it is acting outside the law,” the watchdogs ask that an injunction be issued “requiring Defendants to ensure that the records of Project Meridian are preserved and made available for public access.”

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